James Carnegie, Earl of Southesk
James Carnegie, 9th Earl of Southesk (16 November 1827 - 21 February 1905) was a Scottish poet, nobleman, and antiquary. Life Carnegie, 6th de facto and 9th de jure Earl of Southesk, was born at Edinburgh, the eldest son in a family of 3 sons and 2 daughters of Sir James Carnegie, 5th baronet of Pittarow, by his wife Charlotte, daughter of Daniel Lysons of Hempstead Court, Gloucester. The father, who was 5h in descent from Alexander, 4th son of David Carnegie, the 21st earl of Southesk, laid claim without success to the family earldom which had been forfeited in 1715 on the attainder of James Carnegie, fifth earl, for his share in the Jacobite rebellion of that year.Fryer, 315. Educated at Edinburgh Academy and Sandhurst, young Carnegie obtained a commission in the Gordon Highlanders in 1845, was transferred in 1846 to the grenadier guards, and retired on succeeding his father as 6th baronet in 1849. Southesk married (1), on 19 June 1849, Lady Catharine Hamilton (died 1855), 3rd daughter of Charles Noel, 1st earl of Gainsborough; by whom he had a son, Charles Noel, who succeeded him as 10th earl of Southesk, and 3 daughters. A man of cultivated taste, he practically rebuilt the family residence, Kinnaird Castle, Brechin, in 1854, and collected there with much zest antique gems, mainly intaglios (from 1879), pictures by the old masters, books, and some 150 cylinders Assyrian, Hittite, Babylonian, Persian, and Accadian. But he disposed of much of the extensive family property elsewhere, selling his estate of Glendye to Sir Thomas Gladstone, baronet. Renewing his father's claim to the earldom of Southesk in 1855, he obtained on 2 July an Act of Parliament reversing the attainder of 1715, and was confirmed in the title by the House of Lords on 24 July. On 7 December 1869 he was made a peer of the United Kingdom, with the title Baron Balinhard of Farnell. In 1859 Southesk undertook in search of health a prolonged hunting expedition in Western Canada. He traversed some of the wildest and least known parts of the Rockies about the sources of the rivers Athabasca and Saskatchewan. The Hudson’s Bay Company Governor Sir George Simpson, helped him hire guides, assemble supplies and buy horses, and instructed HBC personnel to show him “every attention.” National Poetry Month - The Earl of Southesk, Fort Edmonton Park, April 28, 2012. Web, Mar. 3, 2017. He returned home in 1860, and was made a fellow of the Geographical Society. Simpson shipped him several beavers to Scotland so that he could introduce the animals to his estate. After a long interval he published Saskatchewan and the Rocky Mountains (1875), a spirited account of his experiences in diary form. On 29 November 1860 he married Lady Susan Catharine Mary Murray, daughter of Alexander Edward, 6th earl of Dunmore; by whom he had 3 sons and 4 daughters. Southesk devoted his later years to recondite antiquarian research, which he pursued with thoroughness and judgment. A prominent member of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, he read before the society papers on The Newton Stone (1884) and The Ogham Inscriptions of Scotland (1885), while in 1893 he discussed The Origin of Pictish Symbolism. The papers were published separately.Fryer, 316. He died at Kinnaird Castle on 21 Feb. 1905. Writing Meanwhile he had engaged in other forms of literature. Herminius: A romance (1862), was followed by an essay on art criticism, Britain's Art Paradise; or, Notes on some of the pictures of the Royal Academy of 1871 (1871). In 1875 he published anonymously his earliest poetical work, Jonas Fisher: A poem in brown and white, a rather crude effort at satire on current extravagances in art, poetry of the Rossetti type, and emotional religion. On its publication the book was assigned in a hostile review in the Examiner to Robert Buchanan. Buchanan deemed this erroneous attribution one of the grounds for a successful action of libel against Peter A. Taylor, the proprietor of the Examiner. Other verse from Southesk's pen often presented scenes of adventure in vigorous and simple metre; it included Lurida Lumina (1876), Greenwood's Farewell, and other poems (1876), The Meda Maiden, and other poems (1877) (inspired by Longfellow's Hiawatha), and The Burial of Isis, and other poems (1884). Suomira: A fantasy, privately printed in 1893, was a curious experiment in meter printed as prose. Recogniction In 1869, on Gladstone's recommendation, he was made a knight of the Order of the Thistle. He was made an honorary LL.D. of St. Andrews in 1872, and of Aberdeen University in 1875. There are at Kinnaird Castle portraits in oils by Sir John Watson-Gordon (1861) and by Miss A. Dove Wilson (1899), and a chalk drawing (1861) by James Rannie Swinton. Publications Poetry *''Jonas Fisher: A poem in brown and white''. London, Trübner, 1875; New York: Garland, 1986. *''Lurida Lumina. Edinburgh, Edmonston, 1876. *''Greenwood's Farewell, and other poems. London: Strahan, 1876. *''The Meda Maiden, and other poems''. London: Macmillan, 1877. *''The Burial of Isis, and other poems. Edinburgh: D. Douglas, 1884. *''Suomiria: A fantasy. Edinburgh: privately published, printed by D. Douglas, 1899; New York: Arno Press, 1976. Novel *''Herminius: A romance''. Edinburgh: 1862. Non-fiction *''Freemasonry: Its origin, history, principles, & doctrines''. Melbourne: Fergusson & Moore, 1862. *''Britain's art paradise, or, Notes on some pictures in the Royal Academy, MDCCCLXXI''. Edinburgh: Edmonstoun & Douglas, 1871. *''Saskatchewan and the Rocky Mountains: A diary and narrative of travel, sport, and adventure during a journey through the Hudson's Bay Company's territories in 1859 and 1860. Toronto: J. Campbell / Edinburgh: Edmonston & Douglas, 1875. *''The Ogham Inscriptions of Scotland. Edinburgh: Neill, 1885. *''Origins of Pictish Symbolism; with Motes on the sun boar and a new reading of the Newton inscriptions''. Edinburgh: D. Douglas, 1893; Lampeter, Wales, UK: Llanerch, 1999. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:James Carnegie Earl of Southesk, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Mar. 3, 2017. See also *List of British poets References * . Wikisource, Web, Mar. 3, 2017. Notes External links ;Poems *"November's Cadence" *Southesk in A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895: "The Filch of Dunmow," "November's Cadence" ;Prose * ;Books *James Carnegie, Earl of Southesk at Amazon.com ;About *National Poetry Month - The Earl of Southesk at Fort Edmonton Park *The Lost Statue of the Earl of Southesk Carnegie, James Category:1827 births Category:1905 deaths Category:Earls of Southesk Category:Lord-Lieutenants of Kincardineshire Category:Knights of the Thistle Category:19th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets Category:Scottish poets Category:Victorian poets